


if i reach out (will you reach back?)

by stupidmuse_hatesme



Category: Marvel, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, F/M, M/M, Magic, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 08:41:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/660003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stupidmuse_hatesme/pseuds/stupidmuse_hatesme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For once, Clint hadn't started it.</p><p>He was just minding his own business, drinking a shitty beer in a shitty bar, when some asshole decided to come in and shoot the whole place up. Clint didn't know why the hell the man was causing such a ruckus and didn't really care to. But then he shattered Clint's glass while it was still in his had. </p><p>It wasn't his first mistake, but it was probably his last one.</p><p>Or: The one where Clint's got super-bad-ass magical powers and refuses to tell anyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if i reach out (will you reach back?)

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this a while ago. Like, back in June. And I even took it to my writing group where it was proofed and given the stamp of semi-approval, and I wrote all the corrections in, added my own and then....let it sit there. I think it irritated me that I had a lot of other fanfics sitting there waiting to be finished (the same ones I have now) and here I just sat down and churned out this puppy in one night.
> 
> Here we are, about 7 months later, and I've finally edited the blasted thing. And am posting it.
> 
> Enjoy, and yes, anyone who's read my other stuff and is waiting for sequels, I'm well aware I'm a bastard for not getting them up yet. Take this as a consolation prize.
> 
> Also, I feel like I have an obligation to warn you for Clint's stream-of-consciousness ramblings. So here is your warning--don't like thinky run-on sentences, don't read.

For once, Clint hadn’t started it.

 

He was just minding his own business, drinking a shitty beer in a shitty bar, when some asshole decided to come in and shoot the whole place up. Clint didn’t know why the hell the man was causing such a ruckus, and didn’t even really care to. But then he shattered Clint’s glass while it was still in his hand. It wasn’t his first mistake, but it was probably his last one.

 

But—the story didn’t start when the dumb goon came into the bar hollering and putting bullets into everything, or even when Clint decided that the aforementioned idiot wasn’t even worth messing with.

 

It started in an orphanage many years prior.

 

It started when Clint and Barney Barton used to hide under their bed when their caretaker’s husband got drunk and beat the children. It started the first time Barney showed Clint a trick when they were hiding in the dusty darkness and revealed the small black star on one of his knuckles.

 

As Barney’s face glowed in the light of the small spark floating above his finger, Clint tried to touch it, and then yanked his hand back to lick his singed fingers. Barney smirked, and Clint thought that it wasn’t really a nice look, but was distracted by the tattoo on his brother’s hand.

 

“What’s that?” he asked.

 

“It’s my first mark,” Barney said smugly. “And it means that we’re going to get out of here.”

 

They burnt the orphanage down.

 

It took weeks for Barney to master his gift. He needed to control to be able to place a spark someplace where it wouldn’t cause catastrophic damage right away—then they could take advantage of the hysteria to run off. But, as his older brother said many times—it was more than worth it.

 

Barney tried to teach Clint, too, but it didn’t take. No matter how he tried, the smaller boy couldn’t bring a spark or flame to his fingertips. They tried for weeks as they rummaged through trash bins in the city and hid from the police under cardboard boxes in alleys. Barney had a flash of disappointment in his eyes whenever Clint tried and failed, but he could tell that his older brother was holding out for a mark to appear.

 

Magic wasn’t common, but it did run in the family. If Barney had it, Clint knew he would too.

 

They managed to stay under the radar until Barney earned his second mark, a star on a knuckle of his unmarked hand that was unmistakably darker than the one he possessed on his right. In fact, it made his first mark appear to be gray, like ash, in comparison.

 

It marked Barney’s ability to blow things up; At least, that’s what Barney said. But Clint knew that it was an ability to combust—to take whatever something had in it that was even a little flammable and cause it to go up in a spectacular way.

 

Barney had less of an ability to control his second mark, however, because it was much stronger than his first. It acted in unpredictable ways, and was especially flammable when Barney was under duress. This became especially apparent when they were running from a beat cop who found them in their most recent hiding place when Barney accidentally blew up a police car.

 

They left the city that night.

 

When they slept under the stars on the side of highways with only the warmth of each other and their coats, Clint wondered what life would be like if they had parents to take care of them. He wondered what it would be like to have a home.Then he remembered the caretaker’s husband, the look in his eyes when he got completely plastered, and the way even his own children cringed away from him.

 

Clint didn’t dream on those nights.

 

The towns they encountered in their travels were too small to hide out in. They would pause there for a night, maybe two (less if they attracted the attention of someone who realized how young Clint was and that Barney wasn’t nearly old enough to be his guardian), and then they would walk on.

 

Barney did not gain another mark while they walked.

 

Clint could see him getting angrier and angrier the farther they traveled. His brother was on a hair-trigger, no matter what he did, so Clint did his best to make himself scarce. He had large blue eyes and made the best of them whenever he could. Whenever he saw a woman running a shop by herself, he would offer to help her with something she couldn’t do alone for a few dollars or some food. He would offer to help carry groceries at stores (if he didn’t get shooed off) and found jobs wherever he could. His face was smooth and innocent. Although he never said much, what he did say was listened too.

 

No one trusted Barney. Clint knew this, and worked his way around it. But he never understood why—Barney was his brother. He would never _not_ trust him.

 

Then they found the circus.

 

Barney wanted to go to see if he could find anyone else who was marked like him. It was dangerous for them on the streets because there were people out there who would take advantage of marked children, who would pick them up and mold them into the kind of Marked One they could control and use for their own agenda. Clint thought, secretly, that Barney was much too stubborn and volatile to be one of those taken advantage of, but he agreed that they needed somewhere to go.

 

It was Clint who saw, during the fire-breathing act, the members of the circus who had marks on their hands. He squinted his eyes from where they were perched in their nosebleed seats, and could suddenly see the people scuttling around the circus ring who had marks on their hands. He could see them everywhere.

 

“This is it,” he told Barney.

 

He did not tell Barney that, when he looked down at the palms of his hands, he found a single black star on his fingertip. He stared at it for a moment, rubbed at it with his thumb, and then closed his eyes. He had never seen anyone with a star on their _fingers_ before.

 

Barney was too busy gleefully planning to look pathetic enough to be taken in to notice Clint. He wasn’t watching when Clint was looking at the archers with avid eyes, or when his eyes were drawn up to the highest perches, wishing he was up there. While Barney wasn’t looking, and acrobat saw Clint, winked, and Clint waved back.

 

Clint never told Barney that acrobat was mostly the reason they got in.

 

The circus was their family. They took Barney’s anger and turned it towards hard work, hoping to sweat it out of him. They wouldn’t let him use his marks until he knew how to do things with his own bare hands. They worked him so hard every day that he didn’t have time to yell at Clint or cuff him upside the head. Clint suspected that they were keeping him from using his marks sp that he wouldn’t earn another—but Clint was too busy to pay much attention.

 

Clint was learning to _fly._

 

The other circus brats taught him the best and quickest ways to scale a tree or a ladder or anything else he was of the mind to climb. They taught him how to perch at the very top, so still that a bird would sit next to him if it had the mind to. They taught him to clear his mind as well, and let his gaze roam far and wide. They taught him to leap from those places as though swan diving and not flinch when the ground rushed up at him. They taught him to trust that his partner was going to catch his hands when he leapt, but to always have a back-up plan just in case his partner didn’t.

 

When asked, he tilted his hand over and let the acrobat see the dark mark pressed into his fingertip. The older man brushed a finger across it, shivered, then carefully closed Clint’s hand.

 

“Don’t let your brother see,” he warned.

 

Clint didn’t.

 

He was adopted by the Swordsman, who taught him to use his small and compact body to his best advantage. He taught him how to become strong in ways that no one else would see; He taught him to fight with swords and knives. He made him dangerous.

 

He was sent to Trickshot, the circus’ resident archer, to learn breathing exercises and patience. The man looked at him, birdlike, and said, “Don’t think that just because of your gift I’ll go easy on you.”

 

When Clint learned how to shoot a bow and hit the bulls-eye every single time, he gained another mark. He didn’t tell Barney about it either.

 

When Barney earned his third and last mark, he burned the entire circus down.

 

It turned out that Barney and the Swordsman had been taking money from the circus. They had been making big plans when Trickshot had caught them. The archer gained a knife in his gut for his troubles, and as the entire camp began to burn, Clint knelt by his side and pressed his hands down on the wounds.

 

“Don’t go,” he said.

 

“Clint,” Trickshot said. “Stay away from your brother.”

 

When his eyes slid shut, Clint took a pack from the tent, put Trickshot’s bow and arrows in it, then walked away from the circus as it went up in flames behind him. He went in the opposite direction of Barney and the Swordsman and never looked back.

 

Clint spent some time in a few circuses here and there, making a name for himself as Hawkeye, the man who never missed, then dropped off the map.

 

It turned out that his mark was good for aiming with guns too.

 

“Well, motherfucker,” he swore when one of the shards of glass flew up and cut across his face. Clint felt nothing for a moment, and then it began to sting, blood sliding down his face. He swiped at himself with his hand, mindless of the bullets flying around him, then scowled at the red across his palm and fingertips, concealing his marks. He smeared his thumb and finger together, the blood slick on his skin, then shoved away from the bar.

 

 _Stupid thug,_ he thought to himself.

 

Clint swung himself over the counter and fell onto the other side just as a spray of bullets shattered the mirror behind the bar and all of the alcohol on display. It forced him to take cover as glass fell to the ground all around him. As the bullets were coughed from the gun, Clint could hear the man behind it laughing.

 

He rolled his eyes, startling the bartender who was also hiding from the shooter. He mouthed _don’t make a sound_ at the man and the bartender nodded with a painful swallow that Clint could hear clearly even above the gunfire and screams of the other patrons.

 

The anti-slip mat was thick and cushioning under his knees, providing the grip he needed to push at with his hands and take off at a spring towards the kitchen.

 

Clint heard sirens and cursed under his breath, forcing himself to stop before he left the cover of the counter. He had only come for a drink. It was his night off. He was minding his own business. Clint could tell himself this over and over, but he knew that the police about to arrive wouldn’t be able to handle this maniac. He knew that they would have to shoot this place up even more, possibly harming more patrons than the idiot had already. He closed his eyes, took a breath, and then stood.

 

It took only a moment to slip a knife into his hand and then throw it. It hit the shooter in the throat. He tried to say something, the blood gurgling out of the wound, then he dropped the gun to reach for the weapon embedded in him.

 

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Clint said mildly.

 

The man’s hands slipped in the blood gushing from the wound, then his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell over.

 

Clint watched him go down.

 

The rest of the patrons were still yelling and scrambling about, unaware that the shooter was dead. But a man in a suit, sitting calmly in a corner booth, nursing a heavy glass of something clear, was looking right at Clint. The archer took in the expensive suit, the carefully combed hair, the seemingly soft hands, and the way the man lifted the drink and sipped it as though saluting him. He also noticed how a smile crept along the corner of his lips.

 

Clint was gone before the cops arrived, but it wasn’t until he was back in his hotel room that he remembered the cut the flying glass had slid across his face. It wasn’t until he was in the bathroom looking at his face, and the crusty blood drying on it that he wondered when shitty beer had become more important than madmen with guns, when killing someone to get some peace and quiet had become the norm.

 

He washed the blood from his face, and then went to bed. He had a job to take care of in the morning in the next town, and had to have his sleep.

 

Clint caught himself thinking of the man in the suit at odd moments in time. He would be adjusting a tie in the mirror (not a normal part of his ensemble) and would wonder what it would be like to slide his fingers into the knot of a tie so crisply folded as the one on the impeccable man in the bar.

 

He thought of the man when he sat down next to a mark on a bench in the park, using his rummaging in his pack as a cover for the needle that he slipped into the man’s arm, and wondered if the other man’s suit was of a higher quality, and therefore softer, as his fingers brushed against the coarse fabric.

 

Sometimes, he would be nursing another shitty beer in yet another shitty bar and wonder what a man like the one he had seen had been doing there when he obviously was more well-suited to a nicer place.

 

Clint didn’t tell anyone he worked for about the marks on his fingers. He let them think that he was another grunt, or even a skilled marksman, but never let on that he was a Marked One. The only people in the whole world who knew were Barney and a woman he knew as The Black Widow. He didn’t think that the Swordsman knew, and Trickshot was dead, so he kept it quiet and under wraps.

 

The only concession he made was to rub his thumb against them when he was thinking, but most people thought that he was remembering his bowstring in his hands—he let them keep that assumption.

 

He earned a few more as the years went by. When he was in Russia with The Black Widow ( _Natasha,_ he had called her when they were in bed and his hands were on her skin and she was looking at him as though she wouldn’t kill him then, but that she might later), he had gained a small one on his pinky that allowed him to make an arrowhead so cold that it would lodge in someone’s chest and stop their heart.

 

It was after she left him for dead that he gained a star to match on his opposite pinky that let him light up arrows, like stars in the sky, as flares to let someone know where he was—or to light buildings on fire just as easily as his brother, Barney, had.

 

Clint was in torn and ratty jeans and a sweater that might have been black at some point, but was currently gray, when he saw the man in the suit again. He had left his hotel room-of-the-month in a quest to find yet another shitty bar in a well-loved pair of Converse, and two sleep-deprived smudged eyes, when he had decided (on a whim) to go to a different sort of place.

 

The bartender had given him a look when he walked in, and Clint could tell that the man was going to ask him to leave, so he went straight to the bar and peeled some bills out of his back pocket (his left, because the right contained blood-stained ones from his prior mark and he hadn’t yet had a chance to clean them up).

 

“A whiskey,” he said.

 

The man raised an eyebrow.

 

“A good one,” he continued. “I’m good for it. Give me something smooth.”

 

Normally, he would have hunched at the bar over his prize and made himself more available to the bartender as a result, but he felt like a target in his torn and comfy clothes sitting at the bar with his back to the room, so he picked up the glass and retreated to a table.

 

There was only a finger of liquor left in his glass when a shadow fell overhead and someone said, “Is this seat taken?”

 

Clint’s fingers thrmmed on the tabletop, the feeling of the wood against each of his marks reminding him that his affinity wasn’t like anyone else’s, and he couldn’t just set the table on fire because of a drunk flirt.

 

He said, “No,” and was tossing back the glass to drain the last of the whiskey to get up and leave, when he caught sight of who was pulling out the chair to sit across from him.

  
Clint choked on the liquor.

 

“Problem?” the man asked, raising an eyebrow and lowering himself into the chair. He set two drinks on the table, sliding one across to Clint.

 

To avoid having to say anything, Clint raised the glass to his lips and gulped the burning liquor down, noticing it was the same smooth whiskey he had ordered from the bartender. The drink gave him the moment he needed to look the other man up and down and decide that he wasn’t mistaken—it was the same suit as from months before.

 

“No,” Clint said, setting the half-finished drink on the table and leaning back in a careless sprawl to smirk at the other man. He kept his hands loosely curled, as always, the marks tilted toward his palms. “Is there any reason why you came over here?”

 

Clint couldn’t get any sort of vibe off of the other man. All he could tell was that he was amused, as he sipped his drink much more slowly, and that his eyes slipped over Clint’s form in an interested way. Hm.

 

“Wanted to buy you a drink,” the man said simply. “And then, if you were interested, maybe spend the night together.”

 

Clint’s eyebrows shot up towards the ceiling and he came out of his sprawl to lean his elbows on the table and look more closely at the suit. “Are you always this forward?”

 

“I find it’s the best policy,” the man said with a smile, “to be honest about the things I want.”

 

Clint couldn’t tell if the man recognized him from the bar, but as he saw the lust flicker subtly in the suits eyes, he decided that he didn’t really care.

 

“It’s Clint,” he said, abruptly.

 

The man smiled, and it brightened his face considerably, changing it from _handsome_ to _attractive_. “Phil,” he said warmly.

 

Clint took another drink of his whiskey. The warmth in his gut was rivaled only by the warm flush caused by the looks the suit was giving him. _Phil._

 

“Do you have a place nearby?” Phil asked.

 

Clint shook his head, gulping down the rest of his drink.

 

Phil pushed his unfinished drink to the side and stretched his hand across the table for Clint to grasp. “Come with me to mine,” he said, simply.

 

Clint’s eyes dropped to the hand on offer, and caught sight of the marks on the knuckles. Every knuckle on that hand had one. His eye shot to Phil’s other hand, which was under the table, then back to the hand on the table. He unconsciously curled his hands and slid them away from the table, looking up into Phil’s eyes as they shuttered.

 

“I’m sorry,” Clint said. Then he stood up and left.

 

He returned to his hotel room only for his things, and left that very night. He didn’t sleep with Marked Ones. He didn’t associate with Marked Ones. He refused to work with any on a job and had never gotten close to one. Not since Barney. There would be no one after Barney.

 

As he took a late-night train out of town, his fingers curled so tightly into his palms that he left behind bloody crescents, and he wished, not for the first time, that his marks were in the same place as anyone else’s—or even that he wasn’t marked at all.

 

He buried himself in work for several months after that, and did his best to stay out of America altogether. He didn’t know what Phil did, but he assumed that it was something that enabled him to travel. The first and second places they met were nowhere near each other. He wasn’t going to take any chances, however, so he removed himself from the country.

 

Clint took every bottom of the barrel job slung at him. He killed crime-ring bosses, politicians, bankers, set up accidents in public places to take out God knows who—he even went on flat-out boring stakeout missions. Anything to keep him occupied. Anything to help him forget the marks that tingled on his fingers every time he drew his bow, anything to forget the look in Phil’s eyes when he asked Clint back to his place, anything so that he wouldn’t remember the smooth way the whiskey had pooled in his stomach with his desire.

 

It all caught up with him on a rooftop in Baghdad when he was perched on the edge, peering carefully through the darkness, an arrow trained on the door his mark was supposed to come out of.

 

“It’s time to come in, Barton,” someone said behind him—he knew that voice.

 

He didn’t startle, just kept his bow trained on the door until it opened and the mark stepped outside. Clint loosed a whistling arrow that went straight through the mark’s eye and dropped him on the spot. After releasing the bowstring, Clint stood and turned to where the suit stood fearlessly in the shadows. He nodded, put his bow and arrows back into their case, and then walked down the stairs of the abandoned building. He climbed into the black car Phil gestured to when he reached the street, and then let it pull away.

 

He watched the suit through the window as they drove away and realized that he had known Phil would catch up to him.

 

What he didn’t know was that Phil would take him to SHIELD. He didn’t know that he was a government agent who wanted to recruit Clint.

 

SHIELD was unlike any organization that he had worked with. He had almost expected a zoo, or a circus, when he had been told the range of skills the agents therein possessed. He had expected it doubly as much when he had been informed that the reason why he was brought in was because of Natasha, because The Black Widow had told them that he was the best marksman in the world.

 

This was true, of course, but he sort of wished that she hadn’t told _them_ that.

 

They kept him inside their base for months. They didn’t trust him, he supposed, but he didn’t really understand why. Clint wasn’t a criminal—he simply took jobs from whomever was willing to pay. He had no agenda, no diabolical purpose. He wasn’t running around with some sort of master plan to take over the world one arrow at a time. He was a man who needed something to do, who had specialized skills only people with specialized jobs needed. SHIELD took him in, so he was theirs.

 

The only person in the whole organization who seemed to understand this was Agent Coulson. Clint couldn’t really see Phil in the man, so he didn’t address him as such, even in his head. He refrained from thinking of him as the suit as well, because whenever he did, all he could see was the man who had saluted him across the bar when he had a splash of blood across the face, the man who smirked at him as he choked on whiskey and had lust in his eyes.

 

Agent Coulson was nothing like that man.

 

Well, actually, Clint couldn’t tell.

 

When he was restricted to the building, he wasn’t allowed out on any jobs at all. The only places he spent any time in were the break rooms, the range, and the gym. Later, for “good behavior,” they allowed him into the lobby and he would go down there to sip coffee in the café. He watched people come in and out of the building, never knowing that he played games in his head with them as his marks. Occasionally, he would idly plan out half-assed escape plans on napkins, before flushing them down the toilet.

 

He spent hours shooting his bow, firing guns on the range, lifting weights and running on treadmills, and did not once activate any of his marks, except for the one that allowed him to see like a hawk.

 

During this time, he didn’t see Agent Coulson at all.

 

He told himself that this was good. He told himself that the best idea would be to avoid the other Marked One, so that his marks weren’t discovered and he stayed safe. He told himself that the agent didn’t matter, and that he was nothing to concern himself with

 

But, instead, Clint saw how many Marked Ones there were who were agents. He saw how happy they were at their jobs, and how unafraid of sharing their gifts with each other they were, how those who were intimate and close would allow their partner to touch their marks. He watched the soft looks on their faces and remembered that Natasha had never touched his, had in fact avoided doing so without gloves between them. He remembered that he had never been with any other partner besides her and had never had the chance to experience such a thing.

 

He remembered when he had seen the marks and how Phil’s eyes had shuttered when Clint had pulled away.

 

Clint took to the ventilation shafts. No one ever looked in there. In fact, it was amazing how few people ever looked up. An entire building full of hundreds of agents, and there was only one circus freak in the lot of them. Anytime he could, he crawled through the ceiling and looked in on offices, searching. He told himself that he wasn’t searching for Agent Coulson (he was lying). He strung himself up in the rafters of large underground rooms that were used for top secret things he wasn’t supposed to know anything about. He climbed the side of the building, just to show that he could, and made himself a nest on top of the roof.

 

He needed to go outside. He needed to find a job. He needed someone who could tell when he was lurking.

 

(He had no idea how to get this someone)

 

Then, one day, hee was peering through yet another grate in the ceiling when he heard an unmistakable voice from down the shaft.

 

“How is he?” Director Fury asked.

 

“Fine,” someone replied. “From what I can tell. He does excellent on the range, passes every test thrown at him. But as soon as he isn’t scheduled for something, he disappears. No one has any clue where he goes.”

 

Clint grinned and edged forward. He knew that voice too. It was Agent Coulson.

 

“He disappears? How can an agent _disappear_?”

 

“It’s the incompetent agents you have trailing him,” Coulson replied. “They couldn’t find gum on their own shoes.”

 

Clint had to stifle a chuckle as he pulled himself, on his belly, closer to the grate where the voices were emerging from. Coulson was right—they were incompetent and it took no effort at all to lose them. He had gotten tired of playing hide and seek with them weeks back, and no longer let them find him on occasion.

 

“Then I suppose it’s time—”

 

“Wait,” Coulson said.

 

Clint held his breath. He hadn’t made a sound, but it was instinct. He held completely still and hoped that it wasn’t him who had tipped off Coulson.

 

Coulson sighed.

 

A moment later, the agent snapped his fingers and Clint heard all of the bolts around him pop out of the metal. He tried to shove himself backwards, but the shaft was falling through the ceiling, the metal pieces coming apart as he went.

 

Then he was lying flat on his back in the middle of Director Fury’s office grinning up at a very un-amused director and a slightly amused Agent Coulson.

 

“Does this mean I get to go out on a job?” Clint asked as the plaster dust settled around them. The remaining air duct squealed from the ceiling where it was hanging very unsteadily.

 

Coulson smothered a smile with a hand as Fury slapped a hand to his face.

 

“Get him out of here, Agent Coulson,” Fury growled. “And keep him busy enough that he doesn’t try this shit anymore.”

 

“Yes, sir,” Coulson said.

 

“Good luck with that,” Clint chimed in.

 

Agent Coulson was his handler, they told him. Anything he said for Clint to do, he was supposed to listen to, they said. He had to work on teams and be a good boy, they said.

 

It didn’t seem like that to him.

 

They were like a team unto their own. When Coulson tipped his head, Clint knew that he wanted him to go out and investigate what that sound was. When he held his hand flat in the air, palm to the ground, he knew that the man needed him to be quiet and that it was serious, so he let his chatter dry up like water in an old well. When his eyes crinkled in a certain way, he knew that the man was holding back a smile because they were on a job. When he swiped his hand sharply through the air, he knew that Coulson wanted him to shoot right away, no playing around. When Coulson gave him a certain look that said _no fooling around_ he knew that the agent wanted Clint to figure it out and figure it out fast so they could get out of there.

 

Even when they were working with a large team of agents, it felt like it was just Clint and Coulson. He had no need to say a word, because the agent always knew what he meant. Coulson didn’t have to look at him because he knew Clint was always watching.

 

He grew to know Coulson’s marks almost as well as his own. He knew that when he snapped his fingers, it meant that he was activating something nasty according to whichever finger he used to snap (and he could snap with any besides his pinkies). He knew that a rigid snap with his right index finger would take apart anything metal within the vicinity and that he better not be nearby when it happened. He knew that the same finger on the other hand would cause people to be unable to speak, mute until Coulson decided to reverse the effect.

 

Clint knew that he knew more about Coulson’s marks than anyone else in SHIELD, even Director Fury, and he knew that he only knew these things because Coulson wanted him to.

 

It was when Coulson and Clint were alone on a roof much like the one in Baghdad, alone on a job to take out someone Sheik or another, when Clint realized that he trusted Coulson more than any other person in the world. More than he had trusted Barney when he was young, more than Natasha when he was sleeping with her (which was admittedly not that much), more than he had trusted the Swordsman and Trickshot.

 

When he realized this, he almost missed his chance.

 

“Barton,” Coulson said sharply.

 

Clint loosed the shot.

 

The arrow spun through the air and hit the mark cleanly, taking him out without a sound. As soon as the man fell, Coulson spun away from the edge and stalked off. Leaving Clint to stare at his hands and wonder.

 

“What was that?” Coulson demanded. “You hesitated. You never hesitate! Tell me what caused that, and tell me that it won’t happen again.”

 

Clint carefully laid his bow on the ground. He had to unclench his hands from the grip to do so, then stood from his crouch and walked towards Coulson.

 

“Well?” the agent demanded.

 

Clint shook out his hands, his fingers spread wide, then flipped them over, offering them to Coulson.

 

“Phil,” he said quietly.

 

His hands were shaking. They never shook. He couldn’t remember a time that they had ever shaken, not even when he was a boy learning how to use the bow. Steady hands were very important, and he would have remembered if he had ever had otherwise. But they shook as he held them out to Phil and hoped he knew what he wasn’t saying.

 

Phil looked at the marks blazing darkly on his fingers, more than a Marked One could usually hide for any amount of time, and then looked into Clint’s eyes. He kept their eyes locked as he lifted his own hands and pressed his fingers to Clint’s, dragging the calloused pads across the sensitive and tingling marks before he twisted their hands together, weaving their fingers around each other until Clint’s marks touched Phil’s and the energy jolted through them.

 

Clint had never felt anything like it.

 

“I’d like for you to come home with me,” Phil said, quietly. “To stay.”

 

Clint said yes.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I should have written a sex scene. 
> 
> Why didn't I write a sex scene?


End file.
